Episode 66: Alex and Lester, Advisor Websites

Episode 66: Alex and Lester from Advisor Websites

Intro & Meetups Around Town

Drew, Alex and Lester from Advisor Websites speak about onboarding new people, and strategies for evaluting during the 3-month probationary period. Advisor Websites has been growing by about 5-8 people a year for the past several years.

One strategy tried was a "team retrospective" applied to a new member of the team, where each other member writes the good and the bad on Post-It™ notes, then review the notes as a team.

Both Drew's company and Advisor Websites have recently introduced QA teams. Drew notes that he initially felt some growing pains, seeming to have to slow down during the QA processes, but that in the end that tends to speed up the overall process, by greatly reducing the number of bugs leaked into production code. Amazon Web Services recently had some issues that may have been prevented with better QA.

Alex reviews his week, with an ongoing theme of communication. They are currently getting ready to release a new version of their product, and Alex has been focusing on getting everyone from different teams on the same page without inundating them with too much information. By including a subset of people from each department, while creating new processes, slowly introducing the rest of their teams is a big help in not impeding progress.

A highlight of Lester's week was working on Advisor Website's new internal podcast. They interview Advisor Website's digital marketer, Kirsten who has blogged about women in the financial industry.

Drew's Meetup Picks of the Week are the Vancouver Erlang & Elixir Meetup on Monday and The HTML500 on Saturday. Lester is planning on attending the Gary Vaynerchuk ManTalks on Saturday, March 18th.

Special Guest Alex, and Lester Tiro, Advisor Websites

Alex Wingert, VP Product and Culture and Lester Tiro, Partnership Manager at Advisor Websites join us today. Advisor Websites are websites designed specifically for financial services professionals, financial planners, and advisors helping to automate online presence compliance among other things.

They tell us about some of their products, such as Advisor funnels. A product that helps financial advisors market themselves online through digital advertising on platforms such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, which delivers local leads for financial advisories.

Advisor Websites is hiring, so make sure to check out their careers page, which also has a link to register for one of their monthly tours of the office!

Meetups Around Town, Mar 6 to Mar 12
Monday, March 6th

Vancouver Erlang & Elixir Meetup (CodeCore 142 W Hastings St) 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Polyglot Vancouver Reading Group (Stage 3 Systems, 220-750 Hamilton St), 6:00 PM

Tuesday, March 7th

Internet Masterminds (Facebook Ads Masterclas, 1090 Pacific Blvd), 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM $495
VPC Camp Tech (Hive Vancouver, #210 - 128 W Hastings St) 1:00 PM $85
Vancouver Azure (Microsoft (11th Floor), 1100 - 1111 Georgia St W) 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
PolyglotVancouver (St Regis, 608 Dunsmuir St) (6:00 PM)
IEEE YP Vancouver Meetup (745 Thurlow St, 25th floor) 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Ladies that UX Vancouver (Unbounce, Suite #400 - 401 W. Georgia St) 6:00 PM
UX Book Club Vancouver (Location shown to members) 6:30 PM
Surrey CodeCamp (Beta Collective, 1-10318 Whalley Blvd., Surrey, BC) 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Vancouver Hack Space (Vancouver Hack Space, #104 - 1715 Cook Street) 7:30 PM

Wednesday, March 8th

VanCity Lady Bosses (Steamworks, 375 Water Street) 11:45 AM $5
TriCelerate - Coquitlam, BC Startups (Browns Social House, 2950 Glen Drive #120, Coquitlam) 5:00 PM
Women Who Code Vancouver (https://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-Vancouver/events/237709146/ 1110 Hamilton Street #400) 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Vancouver Pluralsight Study Group (PNI Digital Media Offices, 100 - 425 Carrall Street, 1st Floor) 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM
Windows Platform Developer Group (Microsoft Canada Excellence Centre, 725 Granville Street, 7th Floor) 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
YVR Startups ([Istuary Idea Labs], 7/F, 1125 Howe Street) 7:00 PM
VanBUG (SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St, Suite 2235 EJ Safarik Sr Conference Room), 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Thursday, March 9th

DDD/CQRS/ES Practitioners (Decentral Vancouver, 436 West Pender Street) 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Vancouver Power BI User Group (Microsoft, 1100 - 1111 W Georgia) 5:30 PM
VR AR Mixed/Immersive Networking + Getting the Money! (The Tribe Space, 68 Water Street, 4th floor) 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM $15
Vancouver Clojure (CodeCore, 142 W Hastings St) 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Learn Data Science (SFU Harbour Centre - Room 7000, 515 W Hastings St) 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Ember Vancouver Meetup Foodee HQ, #200-1224 Hamilton Street) 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Vancouver's Data Driven Wellness Group (Creative Coworkers, B1 - 343 Railway Street) 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Material Matters (Motion Capture Studio, Emily Carr University or Art + Design 1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island) 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Magento VanCity Developer Meetup (iamota Boardroom, 401 – 860 Homer St.) 7:00 PM

Friday, March 9th

Kabuni Academy (Kabuni House, 1378 West Pender Street) 12:15 PM to 1:00 PM
VPC Pitch Fridays (Launch Academy, 300-128 W. Hastings) 1:00 PM
The Tribe Tech Events (The Tribe, 68 Water Street, 4th floor) 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Hi Tech Business (TBA) 7:00 PM
Vancouver Internet Technology Talents Networking @ 9CAT.NET (Tim Hortons, 3433 North Rd,, Burnaby) 7:30 PM

Saturday, March 11

VPC The HTML500 (Rocky Mountainer Station, 1755 Cottrell St. Terminal Avenue) 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM
BrainStation Vancouver (BrainStationYVR, 1110 Hamilton St, 4th Floor) 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM $300
(604) Lady Hustlers (Red Academy, 200 - 1490 West Broadway) 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM $147
Vancouver 3D Printing (Vancouver Public Libarary, 350 West Georgia) 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM
The Tribe Tech Events (The Tribe, 68 Water Street, 4th floor) 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Vancouver Internet Technology Talents Networking @ 9CAT.NET (Room 205, 8171 Park Rd, Richmond) 8:30 PM

Sunday, March 12

iOS Development Meetup for Beginners (Location shown to members) 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Vancouver Robotics Club (Maker Labs, 780 East Cordova) 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Vancouver Hack Space (Vancouver Hack Space, #104 - 1715 Cook Street) 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Women Who Code Vancouver (RIO Theatre, 1660 Broadway) 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

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